


wild card

by andnowforyaya



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Claustrophobia, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Triggers, pre-Sterek - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-23
Updated: 2013-04-23
Packaged: 2017-12-09 08:17:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/772053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andnowforyaya/pseuds/andnowforyaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hello? Oh, good. You picked up. It's us.</p>
<p>Don't be smart. You know who this is, and we've got a game we want to play.</p>
<p>You sure? You don't want to play? You could say it's a real <em>killer</em>.</p>
<p>(Aiden, can you not? That was so lame.)</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>Or, the one where the Alpha Twins want to play games and Stiles is collateral damage. You'd think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wild card

Hello? Oh, good. You picked up. It's us.

Don't be smart. You know who this is, and we've got a game we want to play.

You sure? You don't want to play? You could say it's a real _killer_.

(Aiden, can you not? That was so lame.)

Got Baby Alpha's attention, didn't it? So listen, here's round one. You ready? You listening? I think you are. There's a coffin buried somewhere in a hundred-mile radius of your house. And the game is that you find the coffin. Fun, right? Oh? You don't want to play?

(Tell him who's in it. Tell him who's in it!)

All right, all right. Enough suspense, right? Ethan, do we have Mr. Stilinski on conference call?

(Yeah, it's on. He's not answering though.)

Pity. Maybe he passed out again? Or maybe he's just not getting any reception where he is. Oh, so _now_ you want to play. Okay. Here are the rules: You find him by yourself. You call _anyone_ , we'll know. That's it. Those are the rules. And we don't have to explain what will happen if you break them, right? It's that kind of game. Oh, and you've got, say, three-and-a-half hours to find him. Typical air supply in a coffin lasts four hours. We saw it on Mythbusters once.

(Wait, wait--tell him about--)

Right. My brother wants to remind you that Mr. Stilinski is prone to panic attacks. So. I guess three-and-a-half hours is stretching it.

Oh, my, Mr. Alpha. Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?

(He can't. She's dead, remember?)

Of course I remember. I'm _joking_. Jeez, Ethan. Well, time is money, you know. You better hop to it. I'm excited to see how this plays out. Ethan said you could do it, but honestly? I think you don't really care. He's always been a little thorn in your side, hasn't he? Maybe this is a good chance to let nature run it's course. Let him panic and suffocate and die in that coffin. Wouldn't that be nice?

(You fucker. If you try to convince him not to play then the bet's off!)

Hello? Hello? Oh, he hung up. He was pretty angry, huh?

.

Later, there's an ever-present tremor in his fingers, and Derek will never forget how still Stiles lay, when Derek finally broke ground, three minutes left and phone dead, Stiles white-faced and hyperventilating, quick breaths whistling through his throat. Corpse-like prematurely. He didn't - _couldn't_ \- move until Derek reached down to pull him up, out of the coffin, and then suddenly he was clutching, fingers weak but insistent, shaking so hard Derek thought he was going to shake apart.

Starved for oxygen and then suddenly overwhelmed with it. His hands had been bloody, his fingernails broken and raw. Derek held him, tried to bring him to his Camaro, leaving the shovel where he had tossed it, but when Derek had laid him down in the backseat, Stiles made an unholy noise, wrecked and frantic, and he couldn't bring himself to close the door.

Stiles tried to stand but his nerves were wrought, and his knees useless. So Derek carried him, instead, like a child to bed, and Stiles pulled him so close, wrapped himself so tightly around him that Derek thought he was trying to find a way to burrow inside. "What are you going to tell them?" Stiles was wheezing against his chest. "What are you going to tell them?" and it ate away at Derek, how Stiles still worried first at what lie would cover them.

He carried him to the hospital, and when the nurses tried to pull Stiles away from him, tried to put him on a cot, Stiles left red gashes on Derek's neck with his ruined nails.

.

"Fell down an elevator shaft," he lies to everyone. The sheriff is there, and he sees through the lie.

Doesn't explain the fingernails. Unless Stiles tried to climb out, for hours. Doesn't explain why Derek was looking for him. Doesn't explain why there are no outgoing calls from Stiles' cell for the past five hours.

But he must recognize something else in the lie, something dangerous and poisonous, something so big he can't even begin to scratch at its surface, something that's been going on for a long time, as his son is being pumped full of sedatives in a private room, because he fits his palm over Derek's shoulder and says, "Thank god you found him," and Derek tastes bile in the back of his throat.

.

Congratulations! How's it feel to be a winner, Alpha fucker? Now I owe my brother 50 bucks. You know how that makes me feel?

(Makes _me_ feel 50 bucks richer.)

Right, you probably don't care. You're probably in the hospital lobby right now, trying not to smash your phone with your claws. Actually, you definitely are. We see you.

(He's looking! Don't try to look for us.)

You ready for round two?

(Don't you think he earned a little break?)

You're so sweet, Ethan. Sometimes I forget that. You're right. We'll leave you alone for a little bit. You might want to check on Stilinski, though.

(Aw, you know, I kind of like the human. Maybe we shouldn't play so rough with him.)

.

Stiles is still in his room. They cleared one out just for him. Special order for the human boy. The twins were trying to rattle him.

The nurses have cleaned his hands and wrapped them in bandages, and he's hooked up to a heart monitor, palm upturned above the covers; an invitation, or leftovers from his dad's vigil, but otherwise he looks like he could be sleeping.

No, Derek looks closer, and Stiles' eyes are open in tiny slits, and he follows Derek's movement around the bed. Not sleeping, but heavily sedated. He sits in the still-warm seat by the bed and breathes, watching the heart monitor ping, watching Stiles' chest rise and fall slowly.

His fingers twitch. Derek slides his palm against Stiles' on the bed but doesn't squeeze, and Stiles' eyes fall shut completely.

"I'm sorry," Derek whispers into the stagnant air, the words settling over them like cement.

.

Stiles doesn't sleep anymore.

They move him to another room in another hall, the kind where all the windows are reinforced and security sits on the inside, and you have to be buzzed in, after he wakes up the fourth time screaming, IV ripped from his hand. They have to tranq him, force sleep on him every once in a while so that he doesn't collapse during the day, even though he still collapses, sometimes, unexpectedly crumpling in on himself, and the nurses have to give him a paper bag to breathe into. For the first week, he can't be alone in his room at the hospital, and they can't turn off the lights, either. Darkness makes him scream.

Scott visits; he paces, outside the door separating the wing from the rest of the hospital, scrubs his hands through his hair. "This happened because of _you_!" he spits at Derek, who's leaning against the opposite wall. Visiting hours are over and the hospital is silent. "It's your fault."

"What are we going to do?" Derek asks him, patient, steeped so long in fury that anger calms him. Tethers him.

"I'm going to rip out their fucking throats," Scott promises, eyes flashing.

"We," Derek grits, baring his teeth. " _We_ are going to rip out their fucking throats."

.

All right. Okay. How's our Little Red?

(Resting up in the Crazy Ward. He's crazy. What do you think?)

Oh yeah. He's crazy, now. Right? They can't quite decide if he's a risk to himself or to others. Have to keep him away from windows and sharp objects. You think we broke him?

(Aiden, you know he was already kind of messed up.)

Maybe if you'd gotten there faster, Alpha Hale. Maybe if he hadn't been alone for so long underground, it would be different.

Oh, you think you _scare_ us with that? Who have you got on your side? A few baby werewolves and a collection of weak humans. What did you think was going to happen?

(He thinks he has a wild card. He thinks we didn't check all our facts. Fucker.).

We checked our facts. Nothing can surprise us.

.

It happens when they try to put Stiles through therapy. He hates therapy, hates it even more because he knows all the tricks. Derek watches him after, sometimes, and they sit together in silence in Stiles' room as he draws nonsense in his journal and Derek watches the television on the chest of drawers in one corner. Stiles retreats into himself when he's around Derek, because Derek never asks him if he's doing all right. He knows he's not. 

Stiles doesn't have to wear his plastic smile around him, or tell deflecting jokes, or bark out sarcasm. With Derek Stiles settles back into the cushions and loses track of time, and it's okay, because he's not going anywhere, anyway.

Today, the white noise, the scratch of Stiles' pen against paper and the hum of the television, lulls Derek to sleep.

He dreams of death, of Stiles smothering him with a hospital pillow in Stiles' bed, his legs strong around his torso, his arms immovable. There's a fire in his lungs, and blackness crowding his vision at the edges. Stiles doesn't let up, and no matter how hard he kicks and thrashes, Stiles is stronger.

He wakes up heaving, and amber eyes search his own hazel ones, and Stiles' are dark and unsympathetic.

The pen snaps into shards his fingers, blood and ink mixing and sliding over him onto the sheets and paper. "I'm tired of being afraid," he tells Derek.

The cloying smell of wet metal, and something else. Something feral.

"So I'm not afraid anymore," and Derek believes him, but what does he have to replace fear?

Stiles rubs his fingers together, the blood turning brown and black as it smears. Derek thinks he sees a shock of blue, but it happens so quickly, he can't be sure.

"A spark," Stiles says, a thin smile on his lips.

.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm calling this one: The one where the Alpha Twins fuck with the wrong pack and awaken BAMF!Stiles.
> 
> I am on tumblr: [fan](http://andnowforyaya.tumblr.com) and [personal](http://paperkrane.tumblr.com)


End file.
